


A Message From Hermes Refused

by SharpestScalpel



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Charles is a pretty nymph, Erik is Odysseus, Greek poetry, M/M, reading in bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-04
Updated: 2011-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-24 07:36:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestScalpel/pseuds/SharpestScalpel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik reads the Odyssey to Charles in bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Message From Hermes Refused

**Author's Note:**

> This is a response to this kink meme prompt: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/5215.html?thread=5231711#t5231711
> 
>  _I'd really love Charles and Erik reading to one another; maybe Erik likes Charles to be his personal audiobook on their mutant-gathering trip and vice versa. Would love if they also read one another to sleep (on alternate nights, of course!)._
> 
>  _Doesn't have to be totally schmoopy (though lots of that is always welcome!). Maybe they use books to talk about their childhoods, myths, what fiction can reveal about the nature of humanity?_

_Sing to me of the man, O Muse, the wily one, who was driven far and wide, after he’d sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose towns he saw and minds he knew; many were the trials he endured in his heart on the sea, contending for his own life and his companions’ return. But he still couldn’t save his companions, try though he did; they were destroyed by their own transgressions, the fools; they devoured the oxen of Hyperion the Sun God. And so he took away the day of their homecoming. Tell us, Goddess, Daughter of Zeus, these things as well._

Erik read the original Greek. Charles was better with Latin, but the cadence of Erik's voice was soothing and the bed was so comfortable. He shifted, rubbed his cheek with its fine stubble along the muscles of Erik's belly, where Charles was making himself comfortable. Odysseus, far from his much-desired home, trapped by his own stubborn refusal to bend before the gods - he wondered if Erik saw himself in the ancient hero. And he worried, sometimes, to know that Calypso had set Odysseus free in the end.

 _Now all the others, as many as had escaped sheer destruction, were at home, safe from both war and sea; he alone, pining for his return and for his wife, had been detained, by the divine nymph Calypso, bright goddess, in hollow caves, where she longed to have him as husband. But when the year came around, in the revolving of seasons, which the gods had marked out for his going home to Ithaca – even then he wasn’t safe from trials and among his own – all the gods pitied him, save Poseidon, who raged in his wrath at godlike Odysseus before he reached his native land._

Once upon a time, Erik had fancied himself wed to revenge, that dark-hearted raven. His hatred had become his native land. For seventeen years he had tracked Shaw, journeyed from country to country with no rest for his feet. Only dust on his shoes.

He could, Erik considered as Charles shifted closer still, placed a soft open-mouthed kiss over his navel, call Charles Calypso. The mansion was certainly glittering enough, in its dark-paneled-wood way, hollow enough in its empty wings. And Charles, with his blue eyes and soft hair would make a fair goddess, anatomy not withstanding.

But it pained him to think on it - Calypso was destined to be left, time and again, fated to remain on shore while those she loved sailed away, with bread and wine and her blessing of safety. It pained Erik to see that in Charles, the man's willingness to give even in the face of what it would cost him. And Erik found himself, to his own surprise, unwilling to exact that price.

Odysseus had loved Penelope - but she had been a flesh and blood woman, the warmest of bedmates and equal to Odysseus in her personal power. Erik had loved revenge - had pounded his lust for it into other bodies with faceless identities on every other beach he'd come to. And when it came down to it, when it came to the moment of Charles's outstretched hand, allowing him to sail away... Erik had been unable to do it. Revenge was a poor wife.

One day the humans would come; Erik remained certain on this point. But when it happened, their enemies would not find him in Ithaca (so amusingly closeby, if Erik allowed himself a moment of literally minded frivolity). No, he would be in Calypso's cave, stranded on Ogygia after burning his own boat. The old gods were dead for a reason; Erik would make his own mythology.


End file.
